Heretofore, there has been known a surface mounter adapted to receive a supply of components from a tape feeder, and mount the components on a board carried on a conveyer. In this type of surface mounter, a plurality of tape feeders are arranged side-by-side for one surface mounter.    [Patent Document 1] JP 2000-114781A
Recent years, it has been required to arrange as many tape feeders as possible for one surface mounter, to cope with diversification in components to be mounted, and improve productivity. In order to meet this requirement, it has been tried to arrange tape feeders at narrower installation intervals.
However, if the installation intervals of tape feeders are narrowed, the following problem will arise. As shown in FIG. 18, in case where an operation of replacing a tape feeder 2 is performed under a condition that other tape feeders 1 are installed on both sides thereof, if the tape feeder 2 to be replaced has a slight misalignment, interference between the tape feeders 1, 2 will occur in the area H in FIG. 18 as an insertion port. Specifically, a front end of the tape feeder 2 to be replaced is undesirably brought into contact with a rear end of one of the tape feeders 1 in an installed state. Thus, the tape feeder 2 is hardly inserted by a single operation to cause deterioration in efficiency of the tape-feeder replacement operation.
The present invention has been accomplished under the above circumstances, and it is an object of the present invention to allow for efficiently performing a tape-feeder replacement operation.